Religion no bar for love of Urdu

One would expect Ratneswar Majumdar, Krishna Bhattacharyya, Satyanand Sil and Tapan Banerjee to converse with each other in Bengali. More so because all are quintessential Bengalis who love their Tagore and Satyajit Ray. But this motley group makes it a point to speak only in Urdu. They are bound by their love for Urdu. Bengali Hindus like Majumdar, Bhattacharyya and Banerjee make up for nearly 80% of the 60 to 80-odd students who enroll for the one-year certificate course in Urdu conducted by the West Bengal Urdu Academy every year. They form an eclectic group some are young, many are middle-aged and a few well past retirement. And they love Urdu, for varied reasons. Ratneswar Majumdar, a senior engineer with the Calcutta Metropolitan Water and Sanitation Authority, has a bizarre reason he loves biryani. "Anyone who loves biryani ought to love Urdu," he explains'. His desire to learn Urdu was born during a trip to Hyderabad five years ago. "I saw an ad by the Urdu Academy in the papers quite by chance and enrolled myself in 2007. The language is easy to learn and really very rich. Urdu culture is fantastic," he gushes. He makes it a point to read anything in Urdu every day. "I'm retiring next year and then I can devote myself full-time to the pursuit of Urdu," he says. Krishna Bhattacharyya, a senior officer with the state finance department and Majumdar's batchmate at the Urdu Academy, has similar plans. "I love ghazals and it has made it so easy for me to follow ghazals now after having learnt Urdu. I can read Urdu quite well and watch Urdu language bulletins on Doordarshan regularly," she says. After she retires from service next year, Bhattacharyya plans to enroll for an advanced course in the language. But for Prof. Madhumay Ray, who teaches Islamic History and Culture at Calcutta University, learning Urdu was a necessity. "I love learning languages and have learnt French and Portuguese. But I decided I had to learn Urdu if I were to do justice to the papers I teach and, hence, I took this course in 2008," said Ray, adding that he is "passionately" interested in Islamic religion and culture. This course has been designed by the Union HRD Ministry's National Centre for Promotion of Urdu Language (NCPUL), which awards the certificates. Though this course is conducted by the Urdu academies of other states too, West Bengal is the only one where non-Muslims form the majority of those enrolling for the course. This is also the only state that has multiple centres as many as seven, and the number is expected to rise to 13 in a couple of years and from where many representations have been received by the NCPUL for introducing its advanced diploma course. "The course is in the distance education mode and we give out course materials to the students. Contact classes are held thrice a week at the Academy and they are not mandatory. There is a teacher to take the classes," says the Academy's deputy secretary Nishat Alam. The certificate course was first introduced in 2004 and has been popular from the very first year. Incidentally, Kolkata was the first city in Asia to have a centre for developing and propagating Urdu in Asia in 1801 (see box). Learning Urdu has benefited Anup Kumar Kar, 53, in his budding career as a singer. Kar, who heads the publications cell of the Ramakrishna Mission Institute of Culture in Kolkata, has just completed the course and will take the examinations next month. "I'm training in classical Indian music, especially ghazals, and learning Urdu has helped me improve my tone and diction while singing. I'll take an advanced course and also learn Arabic now. Singing ghazals and listening to them gives me peace of mind," says Kar. Satyanand Sil also had compelling reasons to learn Urdu. "I stay in an area (Bowbazar) that has a sizeable Urdu-speaking population. Many are my clients and knowing Urdu has helped me read and understand legal documents and papers written in Urdu," says the Calcutta high court lawyer. As for the handful of Muslims who undertake the course every year, their reasons for doing so vary from personal to professional. For Bengali movie actress Suraiya Sultana (2008 batch), the desire to learn Urdu was driven by her urge to read Urdu papers and books.

"I knew how to speak in Urdu, but didn't know how to read or write the language. I now learn at least one new word from the Urdu dictionary every day," she says. Sameer Hassan, an undergraduate student at Jadavpur University, wants to specialize in Mughal history and, hence, learning Urdu is necessary. Meanwhile, most of those who have taken the Urdu language course keep in close touch with the Academy. "They attend many of our programmes, like lectures, mushairas and cultural events and use our library regularly," says an official at the Academy, which also commissions Bengali translations of works of renowned Urdu poets and novelists and conducts a Bengali language course for Urdu-speaking people to "bridge the linguistic and cultural divide" between the Bengali and Urdu-speaking people of Bengal.